Hospitals around Australia will be able to place patients into accommodation at Accor hotels during the COVID-19 pandemic as part of an agreement between the hotel giant and at-scale care organisation ‘Response’.
The move follows a partnership signed between Accor and Response, which will see up to 5,000 beds in each state and territory provided to outpatients well enough to leave hospital but not quite ready to return home.
Response is an organisation founded by industry CEOs Ben Beck, Tull Roseby and Hugh Evans – all of whom work in or are linked to the healthcare, planning, utility, hospitality and technology sectors. The purpose of Response is to amplify and assist protocols put in place by government and industry to ensure services and capacity available to those needing assistance can be expeditiously delivered.
“We need to look at this holistically. It’s not just about saving patient lives but considering all Australian lives,” said Response co-founder, Ben Beck.
“We are immediately able to do this by creating and retaining jobs for Australians in hotels, patient transport and related sectors. People want to be working, to be contributing to the community as well as to their own homes and families.”
The Response model draws on latent infrastructure, existing services and talent, designed to scale community care up or down to suit demand using existing facilities. Centralised crisis teams set up by each state and territory to coordinate processes and placement can then draw on this emergency inventory as needed.